Modern portable consumer and industrial electronics, especially client devices such as navigation systems, cellular phones, portable digital assistants, and combination devices, are providing increasing levels of functionality to support modern life including location-based information services. Numerous technologies have been developed to utilize this new functionality. Some of the research and development strategies focus on new technologies while others focus on improving the existing and mature technologies. Research and development in the existing technologies can take a myriad of different directions.
As users become more empowered with the growth of mobile location based service devices, new and old paradigms begin to take advantage of this new device space. There are many technological solutions to take advantage of this new device location opportunity. One existing approach is to use location information to provide navigation services such as a global positioning system (GPS) for a car or on a mobile device such as a cell phone, portable navigation device (PND) or a personal digital assistant (PDA).
Location based services allow users to create, transfer, store, and/or consume information in order for users to create, transfer, store, and consume in the “real world”. One such use of location based services is to efficiently transfer or route users to the desired destination or service.
Navigation systems and location based services enabled systems have been incorporated in automobiles, notebooks, handheld devices, and other portable products. Today, these systems aid users by incorporating available, real-time relevant information, such as maps, directions, local businesses, or other points of interest (POI). The real-time information provides invaluable relevant information.
In addition, rapid fluctuations in fuel prices have become a paramount concern for consumers. Current navigation systems can generate routes for shortest distance and fastest time but do not take fuel efficiency, environmental concerns, and fuel costs into account. The advancements with navigation system need to incorporate these growing concerns.
Thus, a need still remains for a navigation system that can create custom routes to a destination that can maximize fuel efficiency and minimize fuel consumption. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.